WRITING THE POST-SOVIET NATION: SCRIPT REFORM, HISTORICAL MEMORY, AND UZBEK IDENTITY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE WITH KAZAKHSTAN (1991–2026)

Abstract

This article examines how alphabet policy and historical memory have jointly organized post-Soviet nation-building in Uzbekistan, with Kazakhstan used as a focused comparative case. It develops the concept of temporal governance to describe how script reform allocates authority among a usable past, an administratively unsettled present, and a projected national future. The study combines structured comparison of legislation and scholarship with a time-bounded audit of central state websites conducted on 10 September 2026. Uzbekistan’s Latinization, initiated in 1993, has produced a Latin-first but persistently dual-script institutional order; Kazakhstan’s 2017 transition remained, by 2026, a revised project whose principal state interfaces still used Cyrillic Kazakh. The comparison also reveals a shared effort to reconcile titular historical repair with territorial civic inclusion. The article argues that scripts do not simply symbolize geopolitical orientation: they govern access to archives, education, public services, and the historical narratives through which citizens recognize the nation.